Back in 2011 before the US pulled out it’s forces, Exxon’s CEO, Rex Tillerson, signed a deal with the Barzani clan to drill for oil in 3 areas that Iraq still considered part of their country. That didn’t matter to Rex. Apparently Big Oil doesn’t recognize national sovereignty issues if they get in the way of profits. As if that was news.

“Hussain Shahristani, the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of energy matters, told The Independent in an interview in Baghdad that any oil or gas field development contract in Iraq “needs the approval of the federal government, and any contract that has not been presented to the federal government has no standing and the companies are not advised to work on Iraqi territory in breach of Iraqi laws“. Independent, 2011

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, saw this at the time to be a betrayal of his agreement with his owners in the US, the ones who put him in charge. Back then the Kurds were stealing chunks of valuable Iraqi real estate and claiming them as their own in their quest to make the southern section of what I call “Greater Kurdistan” which will ultimately involve chunks of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.

Apparently Prime Minister Maliki wasn’t on board with the creation of a new oil-rich power-house nation and so he simply had to go.

The Kurds have been terrorizing various areas of Iraq ever since, looking to depopulate them and then claim them as their own.

“War is an ugly business, but in some northern villages scattered near the front line between Kurdish fighters and the jihadis of the Islamic State, there is growing evidence of a far uglier crime perpetrated by America’s closest allies in Iraq. For months, humanitarians working in areas wrested back from the Islamic State have quietly documented a pattern of Sunni Arabs, who were displaced during the jihadis’ advance, being denied the right to return home.

Witnesses — including a half-dozen aid workers, a European diplomat, and a terrified resident of the affected area — say the Kurdish Peshmerga, the military force of Iraqi Kurdistan, has an agenda that goes beyond fighting the Islamic State: establishing the boundaries of a future Kurdish state and moving the Arabs out.” Foreign Policy, 2015

Today the Kurds are still up to their old tricks. They are demanding Raqqa be busted off as a piece of what they call “Rojava” or “Western Kurdistan” in their ruthless, blood-thirsty drive to make Greater Kurdistan. And they are engaged in ethnic cleansing of Syrian territories as well (see here, here and here) in fact, they’ve been doing it all along… as if that was the whole point from the start.

At the start of Russia’s involvement with the conflict, they targeted “ISIS” oil convoys as they fled Syria with stolen oil on route to Iraqi Kurdistan to put their loot in Kurdistan Regional Government tankers and ship it off to ports in Turkey on it’s way to places like Israel who were buying it up by the boatload.

And folks wonder why the Kurds keep allowing “ISIS” fighters to flee cities they’ve decimated so they can go do the same to the next one while the Kurds claim the city as their own.

A little while ago I put together a graphic to make it easier to understand the project:

Then Sec. of Defense made it clear what the overall purpose was:

“We have now have momentum in this fight and clear results on the ground… We must ensure that our partners on the ground (freedom fighter Kurds) have what they need to win the fight and then hold, rebuild, and govern their territory (“Rojava”),” Sec. of Defense Ash Carter

After campaigning on a non-interventionist platform regarding Syria and then being attacked constantly by the Deep State, The Donald seems to have gotten his mind right and in March he let his glorious generals send more US troops to embed with Kurdish ethnic-cleansing units to keep the Syrians and the Russians from targeting them. He did that after letting them bomb bridges and water-lines in Raqqa to soften up the target for the eventual assault on the city which is happening today. Seems he figured out just how important Barzani Kurdistan was to the powers behind the throne which is probably why he picked Rex Tillerson as his Sec. of State.

At the same time, the Russians have been softening their stance on the Kurds as well which led many to speculate about a competition of sorts between the two superpowers vying for the interests of Greater Kurdistan.

If you look at a map of Russian airstrikes inside Syria from Oct. of 2016 what you see is a pattern of them targeting the West’s regime change terrorists, but not “ISIS” and certainly not as much as they were back when they first got involved in the conflict.

In Sept. of that year, the Russians accused the US of “defending ISIS” at the UN Security Council in the aftermath of the Pentagon’s “accidental” attack on Syrian soldiers that they hoped would scuttle a deal cut between Obama and the Russians regarding Syria. Just one month before, both John Kerry and Barack Obama announced their decision to make sure the Kurds “remained part of Syria” which appeared at least to mark a possible end of the Greater Kurdistan project altogether. Of course, the Deep State had plans of their own and “accidents” happened and that was all forgotten in the fog of war.

So it would seem the Russians have figured out who’s actually calling the shots over here in the land of the Big PX and decided their best interests may lie in cutting their own deal making them Greater Kurdistan’s sugar daddy.

Perhaps that’s why the Russians just cut a major oil deal with the Barzani clan.

“Russian oil giant Rosneft and the Kurdish government have signed a series of documents that aim to expand cooperation between the two sides “in exploration and production of hydrocarbons, commerce and logistics.”

A statement issued by Rosneft on Friday afternoon said that the documents were signed by Igor Sechin, Rosneft Chief Executive Officer, and Dr. Ashti Hawrami, Minister of Natural Resources for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) ahead of a meeting between the Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.” Rudaw, June 2 2017

“Russia! Russia! Russia!” screeches the likes of John McCain and Rachel Maddow. McCain want’s new harsh sanctions on Russia because they “hacked our election”

The Deep State keeps leaking bogus “intelligence assessments” on an almost daily basis trying to justify ramping up the new Cold War based entirely on nothing at all.

Why?

Here’s another question: why did they suddenly turn on Qatar they way they did?

Here’s a possible answer from Jan. of 2017:

“Swiss-based commodity trader and miner Glencore and Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund have announced the completion of a deal for the acquisition of 19.5 percent in Russia’s oil behemoth Rosneft.

The news first made headlines in December, taking markets by surprise, as Rosneft’s partial privatization was expected by most to be limited to Russian investors.

The price tag on the stake was around US$11.3 billion (692 billion rubles), of which Glencore agreed to contribute US$324 million. The remainder was forked over by the Qatar Investment Authority, as well as non-recourse bank financing.” Oil Price

Qatar bought 19% of Rosneft forking over close to $11 billion US to Russia at a time when the Rooskies were being harassed by the Deep State for getting closer and closer to the Barzani clan in “Kurdistan”

Regardless, the Qatari deal and the new agreement with Barzani Kurdistan puts the Russians in the proverbial cat-bird seat when it comes to the Grand Chessboard in Condi Rice’s New Middle East.

Not only is Russia being punished for their indiscretion, but so to is the current ruler of Qatar. In fact, after a statement was supposedly issued by Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani which was later said to have been a “Russian hack”, the Saudis and the GCC have cut ties with Qatar and placed punitive restrictions on them in hopes they can force a regime change in the country (see here, here and here).

See that? The Russians did everything. The FBI says so. And you can believe everything the FBI says.

Today James Comey is speaking to congress about the Duke of Orange’s ‘collusion’, ‘obstruction of justice’ and various other ‘Russian hacking’ narratives. And just the other day The Intercept took part in a new “manufactured hero” psyop designed to implicate Russia tried to ‘hack” our democracy (or what we laughingly call democracy over here)

Turkey and Russia are calling for a compromise between Qatar and the other GCC states. Perhaps there is an agreement in place between the Russians and the Barzanis to back off their pursuit of the Turkish part of Greater Kurdistan for the moment. Don’t know.

However you look at it, it’s a very tangled web over there.

Recently Exxon was denied a waiver which would have allowed them to drill for oil in a disputed area of the Black Sea for that same Russian company partially owned by Qatar and now working in Iraqi Kurdistan for the Barzani clan. Trump’s Treasury Department said “no”

Apparently we’ve come a long way since 2011 when Obama let Rex drill where ever he wanted.

Someone smarter than I am once said “the history of the world is a history of conflicting conspiracies” and the truth of that statement couldn’t be more obvious than it is right now as the “birth-pangs of a New Middle East” continue to wreak havoc across the region and beyond.

“Russia! Russia! Russia!” indeed.

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I really could use any help you can afford. Things are getting pretty bad

One Response

Kind of disappointing that Vladimir Putin has gotten attached to some neoliberal policies after jailing Khodorkovsky, defending Syria to a degree, reviving the public oil company in the early 2000s, investing in scientific research, and restoring order in the post-Yeltsin years. Why are wise governors in such short supply?
Who can the Syrians rely on to help them preserve themselves, esp. after the Pentgon embedding troops with regime change factions? I hope Assad proves to have the tenacity of Daniel Ortega or the Kims.